How do you remember food being ‘different’ when you were young?

[Geekster1963]

I remember that between October to March time we had mashed potatoes and April until September it was always boiled new potatoes we never had mash in summer or new in winter.

My Mum used to buy a big crate of oranges around December time and keep them in the porch, they were the nicest oranges ever. We never had them in the spring/ summer.

I remember the first time we had lasagne when I was about 18 we felt very exotic.

I never had anything like curry until I left home at 21 in the early 90’s.

Hippy parents. We were the first kids in our school to drink apple juice. We took it in a jam jar, one teacher thought it was a urine sample.

Mixture of ordinary Scottish home cooking like yellow fish in milk, with inedible pots of indistinguishable 'brown', made with rudimentary tvp and chick peas etc.

Best of all was 'homity pies' from the Cranks cookbook.

Had Aberdonian grannies so toasted rowies with syrup were a heaven sent delight.

Waxonfeckoff - that’s proper connection with food. I was born mid 60s also. No snacks. Just meals. Far less processed food. My mother was / is a great cook and we travelled a lot so we were lucky to eat what was considered adventurously for the time. ate so well at home that school
Dinners were a complete obsession and I queued for ‘seconds’. We ate a lot less. Remember school provided packed lunches ( for school trips) were less than most ‘snacks’ would be now. Much more seasonality. We didn’t ever have eg strawberries other than summertime although bejams ( precursor of Iceland) may have sold frozen. Orange juice mostly those frozen cardboard tubes you would mix with water. Very few crisp flavours. Cheese and onion was green packet and salt and vinegar blue. Still think that is the right way around. Hmmm good and bad I guess.

Home made stew made with a stock cube gristly meat and a tub of dried veg totally revolting
chef's square shaped soups
cup a soup the tomato was revolting
crumpets toasted on the open fire with butter and home made jam
crisp sandwiches
home made trifle for sunday tea but cream top was dream topping

I remember in 1984 I watched Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery show on the BBC and was mesmerised. I'd never seen such dishes and ingredients. I re-watched it recently and loved the nostalgia remembering my amazement. I can still recall the first time I went to Chinese restaurant and my friend teaching me to use chopsticks.

I said we never ate out but we did stop at service stations on long trips a few times a year but never to eat; "too expensive, we can eat when we get there / at home" was always the answer. Instead we had what Ben Elton use to call a 'tardis teapot'. Lots of tea inside but most of it made it to the table and not the cup. Parents were never impressed with how expensive a pot of tea was for what you actually received.

Spent days of my life pasting coop stamps (blue) and green shield stamps into books which became very thick and you could then swap for food or home items at the coop. Luncheon vouchers ! Collected so many in some job mid 80s (bbc I think) I used to buy plain meat sandwiches for the meat for my cats with them. Finally had to throw bags of them out when I found them only 10 or so years ago. Central London during 80 s literally only one place you could buy a sandwich on the whole of Fleet Street. Now 20 or 30 chains. I sometimes wonder how
Much we can all eat and drink !

Ken Hom! My brother was obsessed. He used to make spring rolls and stir fries after school. I'll never forget getting our first family wok.

Heron sadly as we became better off (more older DC out working) our diet probably deteriorated. I can remember in my teens having frozen meals from iceland and take-away chinese and even campbells meatballs with instant mash. Not every day though.

Does anyone remember (probably a Scottish thing) what we called 'Norrie Pizza'? It was a local delicacy from chippies on our sink estate.

It was a deep fried basic pizza. Just thinking about it cloggs my arteries up. Only tried it once.

Liver sausage sandwich with a penguin or wagon wheel or haslet or luncheon meat (boak) sandwich for lunch. We never had roast chicken it wasn't considered a "Sunday roast" usually pork my least favourite . Corned beef with chips cooked in dripping was one of my favourites least favourite liver and bacon. Confectionery cigarettes! panda pops, poppets and frys fondant cream the multicoloured one, mint was nicer. Salt and shake crisps. We also had lots of chickens and geese and ate them too

They've gone one better now Yoksha, you can get the pizza dipped in batter before it's deepfried - known as a pizza crunch. Chippies near schools sell it by the slice with some chips for the same cost as school dinners. Not near my DC school thankfully as DC2 would lap that up if he knew it existed...

@WaxedOnFechOff. OMG! I'm utterly speechless. Like your name by the way.

cheers Yoksha :)

Corned beef fritters . God they were delicious.
Sandwich spread.
Vesta curry.
Panda Pops.
Nearly every meal was meat and two veg.
Vienetta.
Findus Crispy Pancakes

My parents bought us lots of fruit and vegetables including strawberries every summer. I was occasionally allowed to eat sweets and cakes when we were eating out somewhere. My parents were strict about food. Even now I cannot ever eat strawberries out of season, it has to be fresh. And I was born in the 90s.

Smash! There was so much dehydrated food, packets and tins. It was really unhealthy .The only veg we had were peas or cabbage boiled until it was tasteless. I loved Ski yoghurts. I remember always being on a diet, eating limp tasteless lettuce, cottage cheese, tomato and beetroot. Imagine eating that now! My mother couldn't cook, so I started making macaroni and lasagne etc in my teens. Started eating Chinese and Indian food from takeaways. I remember Mateus Rose was my drink of choice. Unbelievable now. Never hate snacks, portions much smaller. Yes, tea with meals. I had forgotten that.

Eh....do people not still drink tea with meals? When it's just them at home?

Am I living in a time warp and didn't know it?!

Recent compared to some, but I remember when a pot of tea and a slice of battenberg cost a pound in Morrisons' cafe. Now the tea by itself is more!

The satsumas in winter had blue tissue around them. I remember choosing Barr drinks at Christmas from the milkman. Dream Topping! Eating jelly cubes. Ice cream sandwiches. Arctic roll.Milk roll. Mum always cooked from scratch and made curry etc in the 80's - quite exotic when I think about it now.

Eh....do people not still drink tea with meals? When it's just them at home?

I drink a LOT of tea, but I don't think I've ever had a cup of tea with dinner in my life .

The jelly from jellied eels, with vinegar. We kids used to fight for the biggest portion.
Sandwiches with beef dripping.
Corned beef hash.
Chicken was a luxury we had very rarely, usually roast beef or lamb on Sundays with the leftovers made into cottage/shepherds pie. Stringy potatoes before the new Jersey Royals came in.
Blue Band margarine that came in packs of four.
Surprise peas.
Vesta beef curry was very sophisticated (to me), another treat.
Garlic was foreign muck doomed never to enter our house.
Toast from an uncut loaf, toasted in front of the fire with butter an inch thick that left teethmarks when you bit into it.
Ultimate luxury, a small bottle of double cream from the milkman woth tinned peaches for pudding after Sunday lunch - lush.

Another 1960s child.

My dad bought home a big wooden tray of peaches at the start of the summer holidays to share. We had plums from our own trees August.

My mum made curry that was mince, curry powder and raisins, with white rice.

Portion sizes were very small, and there were no snacks. As children, we ran everywhere or cycled. We'd collect pop bottles for returns and buy daft things like sausages and try to cook them on 'camp fires' in the woods and end up in casualty. Cadburys chocolate was sublime but only for Easter and Christmas.

My mum developed an eating disorder though, loads of us did in the 1970s-80s, so we weren't all necessarily healthy iykwim.

more centred meal times with family.
big jug of ribena and ikea cups
proper meals always had a salad or veg option.
no good or bad foods just moderation.yes we would have highgher caories or treat junk foods but we always new the balance would win out because usually we had proper meals.good snacks and in moderation.
no policing foods.just teaching good balance and cooking.it wasn't so much ur eating too much fat/weight/food mixture.more just portioning and cutting out the "shit" if we let ourselves go lol.but still no good or bad.or off limits for food weight pressure reasons.
vienetta.
artic roll
faggots
every sunday a roast and then tea would be sat round the sunday night tv and either leftover meat sandwhiches or cheese toasties brough in on a big plate for all to share.
no weighing out or measuring of fat carbs sugar etc etc just a good plate of food which followed natural balancing.
never went without but I also remember a packet of biscuits were there and then once gone gone but they never seemed to be.
curly mackain chips and eggs at grans.
Lloyd grossman tomato jars over pasta or chicken.

Born 1960. DPs had travelled a lot, so they could both cook. Mum did it during the week, mostly meat and potato pie or fish pie. Dad would cook a massive spaghetti Bolognese for Saturday lunch, howling with garlic and cardamom. Sunday lunch was lamb, beef and chicken being too expensive. Occasionally there might be rabbit or venison. Bread was made every other day, as were seasonal fruit pies for dessert. Mum had a signature pudding, Jamaican ginger cake under mint chocolate ice cream topped with broken meringues cheap from the baker's. Occasionally dad would make curry, and we would eat it with home made chutney and fart terribly for days.

Then we were sent to boarding school, where food was about hate, domination, and fear. It took years to get my appetite back.

Dad would cook a massive spaghetti Bolognese for Saturday lunch, howling with garlic and cardamom

Tiny derail, but cardamom in bolognese is something I haven't encountered before (love the 'howling with' )...I love cardamom, I'm kind of intrigued by this!

Stuffed heart, Tripe and Onions Liver, Boiled Bacon, Pie & Chips, Devilled Kidneys, Brisket joints, Yes, Food was different, money was tighter than now and the choice was limited. Seasonal food was the norm. I would add that we had a lot less processed foods We are very lucky nowadays.